A Few Things Local Small Businesses Should Do When Marketing Online

More and more small businesses are marketing online than ever before and rightly so. For one, you don’t have to have the big bank that big companies have to compete. Traditional marketing like TV advertising, radio, print can be very effective, but also very expensive and in some instances not as targeted or have the ROI of online marketing. When your ready to step into the online arena, below are a few things that I would do when starting a online marketing campaign.

So your a local business, you have a website that looks good and that is search engine optimized, now what? Submit your site to the major local search engines, Google Local, Yahoo Local and Bing Local. This is important because most of your traffic will be driven by local search.

Submit or claim your business listing on sites like Yelp, InfoUSA and Superpages. These sites are not only good for some traffic but also citations from these sites can help your local rankings within the Google, Yahoo and Bing’s “local pack {see below}.” These listings show up for certain search keywords. Remember to use your keywords in your title of your listing and submit to the proper category.

Submit your site industry related directories and also quality web directories like DMOZ, Pegasus and others. Web directory submission does take some time to take affect, but inclusion into some of the better directories can be beneficial to your site’s ranking.

Social media is the thing to do right now, and for no other reason is that it can be very effective if done correctly. In my opinion it’s all about building connections and trust. Nobody likes being sold to, doesn’t matter if your on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. There is a time and season for everything, when using social networks you have to know the right time to push what your offering and when just to socialize. These are great places to network and build your online brand and should be a part of your marketing plans.

These are a few of the many things I would do when starting to market online. All can and will be of worth and help build your local online presence if done correctly. Online marketing can be a beautiful thing for small and medium sized businesses with the proper knowledge and approach.